Personal Mythologies
My parents tell me a long intricate story about how they met and were married. It starts at a home for the mentally handicapped, involves heart wrenching break-ups, emotional periods of growth and a five day trip to communist Kiev. By and large it’s a true story, but no doubt parts of it are embellished, even, perhaps, in the minds of my parents. My grandmother says that my great grandmother was a cousin (or perhaps a second cousin) to Mark Twain. This isn’t impossible, as her last name was Clemens. My Nona tells me that my great grandmother who immigrated to Newfoundland from Ireland is descended from Irish pirates and that I am, in turn, descended from Irish pirates. I have no way of verifying this fact. Someone might hear the story of how my parents met, or my relation to Mark Twain, or my relation to pirates and say that these associations are worthless until they are verified. However, I think I should say that the fact of these statements is irrelevant to their contribution to me as a person. This is the idea of mythology. My personal mythology is an essential part of who I am. I am necessarily the descendant of Irish pirates. That is a part of my makeup, and is a part of who I am. The fact of these Irish pirates is irrelevant to my behaviour as their descendant. The existence of the gods on Olympus was irrelevant to the Greeks existence as people ruled by those Gods. Arthur is a necessary part of England, and Odin belongs to the Norse. You could write my biography and barely involve a word of fact, because the mythologies which are a necessary part of my character sketch me just as well as my natural roots.
The facts of your history and nature are clouded at best. Perhaps I can know that I have my great-grandfather’s chin and my great-aunt’s eyelashes. These things can not fill in the holes which account for my character, my person, and my personal legacy. That legacy is dependent upon our mythologies, and it is in the context of those mythologies that we share ourselves with other people.
But can we write our own mythologies? Sometimes we do, though we are unaware of it. We take hold of something which may or may not be a part of ourselves already and we weave it into who we are and, more significantly, into whom we are becoming. However, I want to give caution to the ambitious person who wishes to go out and write their own mythology. Unless you exist in a hole, a mythology cannot exist as a part of yourself unless it can be shared with your community. If I wish to be a marine biologist, and I wish it so dearly without studying any marine biology that I begin to introduce myself as a marine biologist, then I have created a mythology in which others cannot share. I know nothing about the genetic make-up of dolphins. I don’t know what plankton looks like. I wear t-shirts with whales on them and change my computer wallpaper to a picture of Spongebob Squarepants. Still, no one believes I am a marine biologist, and I have not a mythology, but an illusion. Mythologies rely upon their being shared by the community. If not, we are faced with a crisis of self.
There is panic in Ancient Greece. Someone has climbed mount Olympus. They have treaded upon sacred ground, and what is worse, they have taken a camera with them. They return to the base of the mountain to inform the Greeks – with photographic evidence – that they have climbed the great mountain and found nothing atop but rocks and wind. The Greeks are now faced with an essential crisis of self. They are now only their facts, their mythology has been challenged. A mid-life crisis, in effect, is a fifty year old man realizing that he is not the buff, brilliant, talented womanizer that he was able to say he was when he was twenty. His mythology has met a crisis. If I am given a family tree, showing me that I am, in fact, not a descendant of Irish pirates, i can no longer burn CDs with confidence in my sense of purpose and meaning.
Do not disregard your mythology, embrace your mythology. Accept that it has already made you who you are, and it will be a significant part of where you are going. You will continue to develop your mythology, to expand it, to write it as you write yourself. The crisis is at times inescapable, though I feel it is only the presumptuous, who hope that they can cut and paste themselves out of the mythologies which they find most impressive, who will inevitably meet the most horrific crises. But understand, ultimately, that mythologies are not pasted onto our selves. As long as they are genuinely shared by our community they are an essential part of our selves, as much so as our eyes and nose. I am descended from Irish pirates. I cannot escape it – nor shall I try.
-Special Thanks to Karl Barthes and Luke Hill
